Japan rebounds… Men’s and women’s basketball, men’s volleyball and women’s hockey to Paris

At the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, Japan won 16 gold medals. 3rd place in overall ranking. Then, it gradually declined, only winning three gold medals in Barcelona in 1992 and Atlanta in 1996. It was lower than Korea. It was a moment when I realized the limitations of elite sports that focus on nurturing promising players. Then, they realized the need for a systematic sports policy and began setting mid- to long-term national goals for each sport and investing in them.

A representative example is the ‘Japan’s Way’ project introduced by the Japan Football Association in 2005. The grand goal is to win the World Cup by 2050. We have divided youth into 3-year-olds and applied customized programs and are making improvements. Japan has maintained the highest ranking in FIFA among Asian countries for over a year since December 2022.

In September 2010, Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology created the ‘Sports Entry Strategy’, a five-year sports basic plan. The goal is to have the largest number of winners in history at the Winter and Summer Olympics and World Championships. It contains a systematic and detailed training system on how to manage a player from youth to retirement. To this end, the ‘Sports Administration’ was created in October 2015 and was fully entrusted with national sports policy. Since 2016, Japanese basketball has begun to improve its constitution by appointing foreign coaches to both the men’s and women’s national teams. Now, eight years later, the Japanese men’s and women’s basketball teams are the only ones in Asia to advance to the Paris Olympics finals at the same time. Women’s soccer, men’s handball, women’s hockey, and men’s volleyball are also heading to Paris. Until the 2010s, Korea had always been ahead of Japan in major ball games, but now the situation has changed. At the last Tokyo Olympics, Japanese women’s basketball won a silver medal, while Korea was eliminated in the group stage. There is also a big difference in the expected size of the Olympic athletes at the Paris Olympics, with Japan having 400 athletes, while Korea has 150 athletes.

Japan is increasing its competitiveness by expanding its sports base through ‘one-person-one-team’ programs and ‘bukatsu (clubs)’. Even if you don’t go down the path of a professional athlete, it’s easy to be a student athlete. They may play as athletes in their teens and later become ordinary office workers. As we discover promising players through our deep-rooted sports infrastructure, we do not miss out on talented professional players. The Korean men’s professional soccer K-League consists of 25 teams in the first and second divisions. 75 teams from divisions 1 to 4 participate in Japan’s J-League. In men’s professional basketball, there are 10 teams in Korea and 54 teams in divisions 1 to 3 in Japan. Even considering the difference in population between Korea and Japan (51.63 million vs. 125.1 million as of 2022), Japan is far ahead. Lee Ki-heung, president of the Korea Sports Council, said, “Korea can maintain its competitiveness in sports by creating a culture in which students are naturally exposed to sports at school, selecting and investing in students with outstanding qualities, and nurturing them into excellent athletes.”